4th Amendment...? We don't need no ste-e-e-een-kin' 4th Amendment...

it's coming up on the second anniversary of the time i had my laptop, camera, memory stick, flash drives, dvd's and cd's seized in san francisco as i was returning to the u.s. from overseas and not returned to me for three weeks... i will be entering the u.s. again early the morning of june 7 at jfk... i must have stumbled across this article as a reminder...

It is definitely fascism when it happens to you by Wayne Madsen May 14, 2008, 00:20 WMR -- In Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's world of an "Israelized" America, the terms SPOT (Screening Passengers by Observation Technique) and BDO (Behavior Detection Officer) are the new acronyms of Stasi-like control of the American citizenry by a government that treats anyone as a suspicious person in the same manner that Israel mistreats its own Arab citizens and Palestinians. Sunday, this editor and his colleague faced the Chertoffian menace at Washington's Reagan National Airport while heading to the gate to board a flight to Houston. It is now clear from a review of the events that unfolded that I was pre-selected for an intensive search and battery of questions even before arriving in line for the security screening. A Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screener was overheard saying, "the guy with the beard." Since I was the only person in line who also had a beard, it was evident that a red flag had earlier been raised. What followed, was worse than anything I had previously encountered while leaving Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport, itself a revolting display of ingratitude to citizens of the country that bankrolls Israel, or the Israeli-run screening process at Amsterdam's Schipol Airport. First, I was instructed to enter a glass isolation chamber and point out my belongings that were exiting the X-ray machine. Anyone with claustrophobia would really enjoy being placed in such a chamber and have to speak to the screener through small holes in the glass. I was then led to an area where all my carry-on bags were emptied. I was also forced to empty my pockets of everything. A bevy of screeners then proceeded to go through my wallet examining everything: cash, credit cards, VA medical benefits card, National Press Club card, voter's registration card, and driver's license. Then came an examination of my press credentials and related IDs: Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) card, Society of Professional Journalists card, National Archives research card, Library of Congress card, three press credentials, and membership card in Association for Intelligence Officers (AFIO). In a blatant violation of the First and Fourth Amendments, my reporter's notebooks, containing names of contacts in Houston and around the world were paged through by the screeners. Another screener asked if I minded being probed in "certain private areas." He then asked if I'd like the examination to be conducted in private. I replied, "No, let everyone see this." He then proceeded to examine my groin area. Then came the battery of questions. 1. Are you feeling okay? 2. Where are you going today? 3. How long will you be there? 4. Why are you going there? 5. What story are you covering/ 6. Who do you write for? 7. When did you move to Washington? 8. Where did you live before that? 9. What did you do for a living before? 10. Who was the most famous person you ever met? 11. What was the most famous event you ever covered? 12. What type of things do you write about? 13. What type of politics do you cover? 14. What is your place of birth? My colleague, who had successfully passed through screening and was waiting for me, was then asked to step into the holding area so she "could see and hear what was going on." It was a ruse. She was also subjected to a full carry-on bag examination, frisking, and a series of personal questions: 1, Are you with him? 2. Where are you going? 3. What is the purpose of your visit? 4. What story are you investigating? 5. How long were you in the US Air Force? 6. Where were you stationed overseas? 7. Why were you not overseas in the military? 8. When are you returning? 9. Who do you work for? 10. What is an independent journalist? 11. How long have you been working with him? 12. Do you find your job fulfilling? 13. What is your place of birth? After this Gestapo-like of questioning, I was told that a TSA screener was writing details in a notebook for the "paperwork." My colleague was told TSA was going to file an "incident report." The nature of WMR's coverage is that our sources are our lifeblood and anything done to compromise them is a direct attack on the freedom of the press and our rights as journalists. The notion of press freedom does not exist in Chertoff's worldview of police state tactics and total surveillance but his worldview is a distinctly un-American one, something that is more properly relegated to the history books of his ancestral Czarist Russia. When our investigations take us beyond the Washington Beltway, it is not within Chertoff's purview to find out details about the purpose of the trip, even though it may shed an unwelcome light on his network of Mossad operatives and Russian-Israeli gangsters and scam artists who are now running rampant in these United States of America. The antics at Washington Reagan National are not unique. Foreign journalists have been subjected to similar invasive screening either at US embassies when applying for the required journalist visas to visit the United States or at immigration screening at US entry points. The corporate media will not report on these cases as they are part of the problem in allowing Chertoff and his American Gestapo to continue to turn the United States into one big West Bank-style checkpoint. One other note. This editor visited the USSR and draconian nations such as Paul Kagame's Rwanda, Yoweri Museveni's Uganda, Hun Sen's Cambodia, the former military junta's Thailand, surveillance society Singapore, and Muslim monarchy Brunei Darussalam. Nothing compares to what occurred at Washington National Airport. It is yet another sign of the fact that the United States has entered a phase of fascist control. There's only one question that remains: Is the slide reversible? Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report. Copyright © 2008 WayneMadsenReport.com

i've kept the receipt for my things that i was issued in san francisco on that unnerving occasion handy in my briefcase... if the same situation should arise, my plan is to produce it with a flourish and ask if they really want to put me through this again...

an additional twist to my plan evolved when i was visiting the family of friends in northern argentina in november 2006... one of the family's cats got into my briefcase and peed all over the briefcase and the receipt... i had to dispose of the briefcase and get a new one, but i kept the receipt and i still carry it with me in a zip-lock bag to avoid it smelling up my new briefcase... if i do end up producing that receipt at customs, you can better believe that i will be removing it from the bag and waving it right under the nose of whatever ice official has decided to abridge my rights...

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